Are You a Tactical Loophole Addict?

I remember how pissed off I was when I got into this business. I had aspirations to create one of those “picture perfect” lifestyles you see on T.Vee, but what I ended up with was another J.O.B.

Things just weren’t working out the way I hoped and planned.

Do they ever?

Whatever.

Fuck it.

Maybe creating review websites to sell strollers and baby car seats for pithy commissions on Amazon wasn’t the way to go.

Problem was, it took me 18 months before the penny finally dropped.

I’m kinda slow like that.

I Gave Up Everything to Do This Shit

Imagine how I felt, sitting in class with students half my age, trying to learn another skill that would help me turn my deadbeat life around.

How did I end up in college 12 years ago at the ripe old age of 32?

Well, I was a Plasterer for almost 15 years, until one day, I wasn’t.

The company I worked for went bust, and with it, so did I.

So I had a decision to make…

Go look for another Plastering job, which I hated, and continue working on cold, damp and dirty building sites for the rest of my life…

Or pack it all in and do something better with my life.

At the time, this was arguably the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make.

I wouldn’t just be giving up a well-paid job. I would have to give up everything.

My apartment.

My car.

My weekly salary.

My security.

And worse, I would have to move in with my parents.

It Was a Scary Time. No. That’s An Understatement…

I was shitting my pants.

Anyway, I decided the best course of action would be to learn a new set of skills that would hold me in good stead for the remainder of my life.

A job was out of the question.

College seemed like the best option at the time.

However, the only decent course I could find on short notice, was “network administration”.

I hadn’t a bloody clue what that was, but it involved computers, and I knew that was an industry on the rise.

To cut a long story short: I dropped out after the first year.

I didn’t like it.

Giving up — a well-paid job, my apartment, my car, my weekly salary, my security, my life as I had become accustomed to, and moving back in with my parents at 32— was a scary decision, however, dropping out of college after the first year was far, far scarier.

But I had no choice.

If the 15 years working on building sites taught me anything, it was that I couldn’t spend the rest of my life doing something else that I didn’t like.

There had to be something better out there.

There was.

The Start of my Marketing Journey

It would be a couple of months after dropping out of college when I found out about people making money on the Internet, selling other people’s products.

After looking into it, and reading ALL the success stories many others were having, I borrowed a few quid from Tina, my girlfriend, bought my first training program, and got to work.

Boy did it look a lot easier than it really was

I created my first review website a couple of weeks later, selling baby strollers as an affiliate for Amazon.com

It was hard.

To get traffic, I had to rank my review site on the first page of Google.

So there I was, every single day, creating backlinks on every website I could find, just to get my website higher in the search rankings.

For a while I did okay, I got traffic, but never made much.

In fact, in my first year I made about $100 in commission, in total.

It was soul-crushing at times, working harder than I ever worked in my Plastering job, doing something else I didn’t enjoy, and I was still no better off.

I felt completely lost.

At that stage I seriously contemplated packing it all in.

But I couldn’t.

They say that if you’re going through hell, best to just keep on going.

So that’s what I did.

Besides, I don’t think I would have ever forgiven myself if I gave up.

One thing I knew for certain — in the midst of so much uncertainty — was that I just couldn’t keep doing the same things that got me to this point.

The amount of stuff I was doing on a daily basis would make any grown man or woman cry, or vomit

Creating review websites for strollers and car seats.

Writing up to 10 articles a day on topics I knew little about.

Backlinking on any blog, forum and social site I could find.

Creating classified ads on every site that would allow me to. Having to create dozens and dozens of email accounts because they kept banning them.

All the usual SEO nonsense.

Creating reports and using software “bot” programs to plaster them on every site imaginable; literally hundreds of thousands of low quality sites.

I did it all, and more.

That initial excitement we all have when we first realise people are making money on the Internet, was completely gone, and replaced with dread.

After just ONE year in, I was almost burnt out.

Half way through the second year (yep, I said I was slow, and came back for another round of torture) I had enough.

My brain had turned to mush and most days I just wanted to lie down and take a long nap, just so I wouldn’t have to think about the mess I was in.

That’s no way to live.

Just like most people, when I got into this business I had aspirations of creating a better life for myself and my family.

That’s the dream we’re all promised, right?

Instead, what I ended up with was another crappy job.

I was frustrated.

Fed up with the long, unsociable hours, and the depressingly average income.

That’s putting it mildly.

If you can relate to any of that, even just a little, then I feel for you.

It’s a fucking terrible situation to be in, especially when you’re unsure if it will ever change, or even if you have the potential to turn it around.

Believe me. You have.

Like I said, the first thing I did — even though it was a difficult choice to make — was to delete ALL my review websites, abandon the thousands of articles I had written, kicked SEO to the curb, and uninstalled the software programs I was using to spam backlinks across the web.

I needed a fresh start, so that meant I had to make a FRESH START.

Start again.

From scratch.

Only this time I wasn’t going to make any rash decisions and jump onto the next shiny opportunity that promised me quick success.

I didn’t buy anything unless I was certain it was something I needed

No bright shiny objects.

No being manipulated by the savvy gurus peddling their rainbow-farting Unicorn solutions.

While everybody else was peddling crap, I focused on giving value.

Very Important: BECAUSE I went in with that mindset, I ended up creating and selling my own information products very quickly.

In a way, I backed myself into a corner, because the only way I could be certain my customers were going to get value, was if I created that value myself.

I couldn’t trust anyone else to do it.

Even today, almost 10 years from when I first started online, I still don’t promote affiliate offers to my audience.

I’m not suggesting everyone elses products are inferior to mine, it’s simply a choice I make so I can control the quality of the content MY people consume.

Your Business is a Reflection of What You Learn

Imagine you were given a jigsaw puzzle for your birthday.

I know, crappy gift, right?

On the front of the box is an image of what the puzzle should look like when completed.

You open it up and get to work.

Looking at the image on the box, you notice that the sky takes up at least a third of the whole puzzle.

So you start matching the blue pieces together first.

Before you know it you’re on the pigs back.

You’re flying.

Then you get to the hard bits, the darker bits at the bottom.

All the pieces look the same. But you’re smart. You’ll figure it out as long as you stick with it, right?

I mean, it’s a bloody jigsaw puzzle, totally solvable with a little patience.

However, some of the pieces aren’t aligning.

You’ve tried every combination, but somehow they just ain’t fitting.

You’re not a happy camper.

“What’s going on here?”, you’ll hark.

“Am I missing something?”

“Am I stupid?

“Can I not bleedin’ solve a simple jigsaw puzzle?”

Not so faster, Soldier.

Not Me.

Not You.

Not even the good lord himself can solve a Jigsaw puzzle that hasn’t got all the pieces.

Maybe it’s not your fault after all.

Maybe you just need to find out where those missing pieces are, and get to work filling those gaps.

Here’s a very important lesson I learned along the way:

Your business is a reflection of what you learn, and what you learn will be reflected in what you earn.

Imagine for second you want to become a Doctor.

How would you approach the study of medicine and the human body?

You wouldn’t seek out your knowledge inside public forums or on social media, and you wouldn’t cheap out on your education, price shopping for $9 products from some backstreet, shifty-looking hack, right?

Not a chance.

And yet, isn’t that what most people are doing when it comes to educating themselves on the business of Marketing?

What about if you wanted to become a Lawyer; how would you approach the study of law?

If that’s too high-brow for you my humble little genius…

How would you approach the study of becoming a Mechanic, or a Plasterer, or any trades-person?

Would you put as much consistent effort into learning any of those trades, as you do marketing?

And… if you did put the same effort into the study of medicine, or law, or becoming a mechanic, as you are right now with your online business, would you be any good at what you do?

They simply don’t respect the opportunity that’s staring them in the face.

Instead of studying what works, why it works, and how they can make it work, they instead seek out opportunities that promise to help them avoid doing much work at all.

Fools them.

So there’s a thought experiment for you.

Ask yourself if you’d be a Dangerous Doctor, a Lousy Lawyer, or an Incompetent Mechanic if you took the attitude you have right now, towards learning and implementing the best marketing practices, and applied it to any of those professions?

Would you even qualify to become good at any of them?

Would you expect to make any money?

Remember, what you learn will be reflected in what you earn. And since most people in our industry don’t make any money, it’s not a stretch to assume it’s because of the information they’re buying and consuming.

I had to ban a person from buying one of my training courses the other day.

I didn’t want his money because I knew exactly the type of customer he would have been.

How did I know?

Because when he emailed me to ask questions about my product, his questions were ALL about making money quickly, with little effort.

Yes, we’re all out here trying to make money, it’s just that some of us care MORE about giving value because we understand that that’s the core reason businesses thrive.

If you want to know the REAL reason why so many struggle, it’s because they put THEIR needs ahead of the people in their marketplace

And that, my friend, is a recipe for disaster.

When you realise that money is the result of giving value…

You’ll think twice before you promote that crappy affiliate offer that you haven’t even used.

You’ll think long and hard about selling people money making products if you haven’t made any money yourself.

You’ll pay less attention to the gimmicks and tricks; the “get rich quick” tips, and as a result, your whole marketing approach will change for the better.

Even the content you consume will have more substance.

Those “short lived” gimmicky tactics full of false promises and forced persuasion techniques so many still use today, are NOT working as well as they used to.

What’s so crappy about that approach is that rarely is the customers best interest at heart.

How long do you plan to be in this business?

For years?

If that’s the case, then it makes more sense to build your business using long-term strategies centered around actually giving a shit about the people you’re taking money from.

Newsflash: Creating a successful business is never easy.

Why would it be?

However, if you’re chasing rainbow farting Unicorns; always looking for a new, bright and shiny tactical loophole you think will make you lots of money quickly and easily, then boy are you making it far more difficult than it needs to be.

It’s not easy, but if you do the right things, in the right way, it certainly doesn’t have to be as difficult as the vast majority of people are finding it.

When I was a Plasterer back in my other life, I was good at what I did

If I did, I would have been mediocre at many things. Instead, I focused on JUST Plastering, and became a master of ONE.

Obvious.

Here’s something to think about:

What I just said, is so obvious, so self evident, that anyone I say it to… understands exactly what I mean.

Just like you understand it.

And yet, those very same people who know it to be true; to be obvious, even basic, are the same people who jump from product to product and never focus on just ONE thing.

Crazy, right?

And so, most marketers (I use the term “marketers” very loosely here) are dabblers, never becoming masters at anything, always scattering their focus, and as a result, always stuttering through this business.

This way of working leads to frustration, overwhelm and eventually, inevitable failure.

There’s a complicated machine with buttons and cogs and levers and switches and dials

With so many different combinations and sequences in which the machine can be set in motion, rarely will it run the same way for any two people who use it.

The combinations are almost infinite.

I call this the mechanics of how a business works:

When you press a button and pull a lever and turn a switch, it sets the machine in motion.

How well the machine works depends on what levers, buttons, switches and dials are activated, and in what sequence.

If you press this button and pull that lever the machine either chugs along like a dream or stutters and spurts like a clapped out nag.

If you know what buttons to press, the machine does its job and produces what it’s supposed to.

Money.

How much money it produces is completely down to the person who’s using the machine:

Mr Tactical goes to an engineering forum and asks if anyone knows how to use the machine, but since there’s literally millions of different ways to use it, he gets a lot of conflicting advice.

However, one person who claims to be an engineer for NASA, offers him a blueprint that’s guaranteed to get the machine purring like a Cheshire cat.

It’s a report, and he wants $9 for it, even though, he tells Mr Tactical, it’s worth a lot more considering it’ll help him make lots of money.

What a bargain

Mr Tactical, without checking the engineers credentials, whips up the report, devours the information and sets off to make his fortune.

Armed with the knowledge of what levers, buttons and switches to activate, he starts up the machine, pushes and pulls what he was told to, and BAM, the machine sets off in motion.

It’s looking good

Wheels are spinning, chains are jangling, pipes are piping and all is looking rosy.

But it doesn’t last.

The machine begins to stutter.

It’s spurting, spitting out oil and grease, until it finally grinds to a halt.

Mr tactical ain’t too happy.

Maybe he pulled the wrong lever.

Maybe it was the yellow button; not the blue one.

Or maybe that engineer got his stripes fixing lawnmowers instead of rocket ships.

Either way, the machine didn’t work as efficiently as the NASA Lawnmower engineer told him it would.

It is, after all, a complicated piece of machinery.

What Mr Tactical does next, is what most tactical minded people do

He goes out looking for another blueprint inside another public forum.

And of course, there are hoards of engineers willing to sell him their blueprint for $9 too.

Funny how all these superstar engineers, with the blueprints to a money-making machine, are happy enough to hang out inside public forums selling their blueprints for such a low cost.

Mrs Practical wants to make money too.

She hears of a machine that literally prints money.

Off she goes to look at the machine.

It looks complicated.

So many cogs and dials and buttons and levers.

“Okay”, she thinks, “Looks like I’m going to have to sit down and study this piece of machinery in detail”.

So that’s what she does.

First, she studies how the buttons work.

Then the dials, followed by the levers and switches.

After a short while and a bit of patience, she thinks she has a good understanding how to make the machine work.

She starts it up, pushes a button and monitors what happens.

All looks good.

She turns a dial.

Still looks good.

She then moves onto the levers. There are many levers; many options; different lengths and colors.

She pulls one of them and BOOM, the money-machine grinds to a halt.

What Mr’s Practical does next is what all strategic people do

She reverse engineers what went wrong and readjusts her approach.

“The machine was working well up until I pulled this lever” she notes. “Everything before that went smoothly.”

She decides that she needs a little help, so off she goes looking for someone who knows about levers.

On her travels she comes across an engineer who claims to be the chief money machine expert at NASA, or something, and he offers Mrs Practical a complete step by step blueprint for $9.

“Piss off” Mrs Practical says to the slimey lawnmower engineer…

“I’ve did enough studying on the machine myself to know that what you’re selling me is a big bag of hot air.

I’m not a Mr Tactical, I’m a Mrs Practical goddammit!

If I needed heart surgery, I wouldn’t be looking for my GP to do it for me, would I?

No, I’d want a heart surgeon who specializes in HEART SURGERY, and I certainly wouldn’t trust any surgeon who gives discounts or sells his services for 9 bloody dollars.”

After she calms down, Mrs Practical spots a lever expert across the street.

She approaches him and asks if he knows anything about money making machine levers.

He does.

He shows her testimonials from REAL people who have used his levers before.

She’s impressed.

“How much do you charge for your lever report”, she asks.

“$200” he responds, “and if you’re not happy for whatever reason, or no reason at all, and my lever guide doesn’t do exactly what I said it would; you have a full 365 days to ask for a full refund; no questions asked.”

“Sounds fair”, she replies.

“Here’s your $200”.

“Here’s your lever guide” the expert on levers, replies.

Mrs Practical reads the guide, takes notes, sets up a plan on how best to use her new lever knowledge on her money machine, takes immediate action, and just like butter, the money-machine works better than it ever did.

Every day, Mrs Practical works on her money machine.

Sometimes however, cogs and levers and dials and switches and buttons become outdated, but she understands that that’s just an inevitability. Besides, because she knows the inner workings of the money machine by now, she knows EXACTLY where to go to get replacements.

And that ain’t from plastic lawnmower engineers hanging about on public forums.

We all have access to this money machine

But in order for us to make it produce results, which is the ultimate goal after all, we first need to understand how it works, why it works, and how to make it work long-term.

And that requires some patience.

If we just blindly and furiously pull levers and turn dials and press buttons in the hope that it will magically run like a dream, we’ve only got ourselves to blame when it breaks down and produces chump change.

Struggling Marketers have dozens, maybe even hundreds of guides to the inner workings of the machine, but they can never get it to run properly

I mean, if the product itself was $9, for example, I expected that I would have learned how to create my own $9 product.

I didn’t see that as a rational choice to make

So I went out and found the best of the best on that topic, and paid them $5000 to teach me what they knew.

I’m not saying you have to pay that much for one product. I’m merely pointing out that to create a successful business, one that produces consistent results, you must understand that the knowledge you learn will ultimately reflect what you eventually earn.

Most people are looking for lawnmower engineers to teach them how to put together a space shuttle.

I promise I’ll drop the “machine” analogies for now, okay?

But all they end up with are the blueprints on how to put together a lawnmower.

That was the last one.

I’m challenging you to think bigger; to demand more from yourself; to not settle for chump change.

Almost All Tactical Minded People in this Business, are Addicts

Really.

They can’t help buying into the promises of easy quick “push-button” riches.

Inevitably what happens, is they get pulled in too many directions, by too many different marketers, teaching them too many different tactics.

Before long they’re up to their eyeballs in a million and one different ways to make money.

It’s overwhelming.

It’s exhausting.

It doesn’t work.

The only way to get from A to B is to follow ONE thing until completion

This is what happens to people who jump from product to product:

They start something.

Work with it for a short while.

Then abandon it.

NO visceral experience or knowledge is gained this way.

Then, they repeat the process with another product.

Then another.

And another.

Eventually what they end up with is a head full of fragmented tactics but NO REAL EXPERIENCE at completing anything.

In fact, and this super important:

They end up being a master of NOT finishing things.

Think about this:

“Never Give Up… because that is the place and the time that the tide will turn.”

Ever heard that quote?

Now, how can you ever get to the place and time when the tide will turn, if you don’t stick to anything long enough?

It’s time for a change!

It’s time to stop spinning your wheels.

It’s time to knuckle down, take your time, and get to work creating a business by following a strategic blueprint instead of a tactical one.

That’s all cheap products that promise instant riches are, tactical approaches that lead to dead ends.

Even if you make some money from the new whizz-bang shiny trinket being peddled by plastic marketers on public forums, that still doesn’t give you a business, does it?

Of course not.

Tactics are what you use in an already functioning strategy in an already functioning business.

On their own, they always lead to a dead end.

Funny thing: You’re prob’ly doing the right things already in your business, but if you’re not seeing the results, it’s most likely because you’re approaching them in the wrong way.

Everybody Claiming to be an Expert

At the core, “creating an Internet business” has certain elements which must be put in place.

Chances are that you already know what those elements are.

Most people do.

When we look at them from a 30.000 ft view, however, it gives plastic marketers leverage to manipulate people.

How?

Because when you know the elements, you can then create a product teaching people what they are.

For instance: I can teach you about squeeze pages simply by watching a couple of YouTube videos or reading a thread inside a public forum.

But, does that mean I’m an expert?

Does that mean I’m now qualified to teach that topic?

Sort of.

The problem here is that JUST knowing how to create a squeeze page, for example, is NOT enough.

What if the squeeze page I show you how to create, doesn’t help you build a QUALITY email list?

What if the squeeze page I show you how to create, attracts the WRONG people into your business?

What if the squeeze page I show you how to create, DOESN’T differentiate you and your business from the other hundreds of thousands of marketers in your space?

In Short: If your squeeze page is set up to attract the wrong people, it’ll essentially dilute the performance of everything else you do.

In fact, each of the 5 elements in your business, must work in tandem; not as isolated incidents or tactics.

Without context, you get confusion.

The 5 Steps to Creating an Internet Business:

Choose a Niche

Create a Lead Magnet

Set Up a Landing Page

Build Email List

Generate Traffic

That’s it, more or less it.

(You can add in products and funnels, but to keep it simple, these are the main elements)

However — and this is where almost everyone’s business breaks down — if you approach each one in isolation, without understanding how “one” element affects the other, you’ll struggle.

Not only will your own business feel disjointed and out of whack; your prospects will have no context.

IMPORTANT:

Your niche affects your whole business.

Your lead magnet affects how well your landing page converts.

Your landing page affects the quality of your email list.

Your emails affect the the performance of your product promotions.

Your traffic, which ALWAYS comes last, will be wasted if ALL elements preceding it are not set up properly.

Approach them in isolation, which most people do, and your business won’t run smoothly.

There’s no great mystery to writing emails. As long as you have your subscribers best interests at heart, you’ll know what to do.

When you write an email, before you send it, ask yourself if you would send this email to one of your friends, or a family member? If you wouldn’t, then don’t send it.

Driving Traffic to Your Squeeze Page:

Focus on “conversions” and you’ll need less traffic.

Traffic has a price. You either pay for it with money, or your time. Which is more valuable to you?

Learn to master one traffic source before you move onto the next.

Set up a schedule and create amazing, sharable content on a consistent basis.

You must understand who you’re target market is, and who isn’t. Attract your ideal prospect and repel everyone else.

Everybody wants traffic, but very few people are set up to convert that traffic into sales.

It’s not about the amount of traffic, it’s the quality of traffic that matters most.

Everyone is working hard trying to create a business that makes money

We all are.

I don’t doubt it for a second.

When I ask people what their biggest obstacles are, most of them tell me it’s “not having enough time”.

The answers they give are obviously true for them; no one is lying about it, but to say that “time” is an issue, is just wrong.

It may be AN issue, but it isn’t the MAIN issue; at least it isn’t for most people.

You know how many hours I have to work each day to be happy I had a productive one?

3 Hours.

I’m not wearing that number like a badge of honor, and I’m not saying I don’t work more than 3 hours. What I AM saying is that within those 3 hours, I prob’ly do more work than most people do in 12 hours.

That’s the reason I believe “time” — and not having enough of it — is a myth.

Maybe it’s a reason, or an excuse for people to use. I honestly don’t know, but what I do know, is that most people are NOT working on the right things.

For instance: Changing a header on my website is NOT what I consider “working time”.

That, to me, is downtime, and I only work on those low priority tasks AFTER I complete my “priority” tasks, which as I said, only takes me 3 hours a day.

Think of all the stuff you have to do every day to grow your business?

It’s a lot, right?

Sometimes (maybe all the time) it feels like there’s just too much to do and not enough time to do it.

Chances are, most of those tasks you think are important for your business, are not important at all.

How will you know if that’s true unless you create a filter system to weed out the low priority tasks?

That’s what I do, and it’s why I only need to work 3 hours a day.

As brain-dead simple as this is, when you set up a filter system, your life, and business become a lot more focused

Think of it like this: You have a shit load of tasks to complete, and every day you work on them, most often, randomly.

At least that’s what most people do.

Sure, they have an idea of what to do first, and second, and third, but most often they never actually stop to think whether those tasks are high, or low priority tasks.

Big mistake.

On the surface, it doesn’t seem too important, but over time, if most of what you’re working on are low priority tasks, in the end, due to compounding, you end up working 12 hour days and still never seem to get much done.

The difference between being “busy” and being “productive”

Most people are working hard on busy-work and rarely separate the high priority tasks from the low priority tasks.

When I set out my daily tasks, I ALWAYS label them from high priority. to low priority.

That’s easy.

If I have, let’s say, 10 things to get done that day, I’ll write them down, and then number them from 1–10 in order of MOST important to LEAST important.

Very simple, and yet, very powerful.

Actually, it’s so simple, most people reading this won’t even do it.

Another big mistake.

So now I have 10 tasks to complete that day, and just by looking at them, I can tell what my 3 most important tasks are.

Here’s the important bit:

No matter what I do that day, I ALWAYS make sure those 3 tasks are completed BEFORE anything else is even attempted.

You get me?

After I complete those 3 high priority tasks, I then, if I have time, continue on down the list, completing each task in order of importance.

If I finish the list, great.

If I don’t, that’s fine too.

Because what’s most important, and what continually drives my business forward, is that every single day, no matter what, I, at the very least, complete 3 high priority tasks in my business that move the needle more than any other tasks I could do.

I know, 3 tasks doesn’t sound like much, but if those tasks are high priority; tasks that move the needle most in your business, and they are completed every single day no matter what, you will start to see your business growing steadily due to the art of compounding.

Never forget: It’s not “how many tasks” you’re doing that moves the needle most in your business, it’s “how many priority tasks” you’re doing on a consistent basis.

What’s Next for You?

Fair play to you if you made it to the end without skipping ahead.

It was a long read, that’s for sure.

I hope you learned something you can take away and put to use in your business.

I know there were very few “how to” tactics.

Of course, the “how to” stuff is very important, but completely learnable.

It’s the Philosophy; the mindset you have BEFORE you think about the “tactics” which will ultimately determine what results you get.

Truth is, nothing happens in isolation.

One thing automatically implies another.

Most people look at opportunities as single “isolated” events. But rarely do they ever lead to an end result, and never do they lead to a business that makes money, long-term.

If you have been paying attention, you now understand that building a business is a process. Taking a bunch of tactics and linking them together to create context. Because without “context” you are left with a bunch of random events that make little sense when meshed together.